Coronavirus and Pandemics

No, jar, that was not the determination. The determination of the Republican Senate was that they couldn't piss off Trump's base because it was the national Republican base as well. A "Best Interest of the Nation" test was never a factor. Republicans don't have a "Best Interest of the Nation" ideology.

The argument his lawyers made and the Senate agreed with the Chief Justice Concurring was that if the President thought his reelection was in the Best Interest of the Country then whatever he did to further that was not an impeachable offense.

It's a vicious circle. They believe everything he says so he can babble anything - it probably wouldn't even have to be words.

The whole populist right wing approach is devilishly ingenious. They can pile lie upon lie to their fundamentalist evangelical base, knowing that those people cannot allow themselves to accept that they have been taken in by a lie. Because the moment they accept that, they know that it will threaten the foundations of their absolutist religious belief system. If they’re wrong about Trump, maybe, just maybe, they could be wrong about YECism.

And you believed *they* believed this?Modern American politics, jar. Smoke and mirrors. Hidden agendas."Hey, tell you what. Let's come up with the most god awful excuse to slide through this trap without doing what obviously needs to be done."If they had convicted the sob, as they should have, they would have shot themselves in the head with their base. No, no, no. Not allowed. This was the Senate's not-so-silent mantra even before the house hearings began.

No idea whether or not they *they* believed anything. But I do know what argument they presented and the Senate with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court accepted.

The tripod of pandemic defense is social distancing, widespread testing and contact tracing. The Trump Administration is examining the possibility of "pool testing." It doesn't matter what kind of testing they're proposing, just the fact that they're going to give testing any attention at all is a giant leap forward. I thought Trump was going to try to eliminate testing in order give liberals one was less fact to complain about.Pool testing means combining the samples of 20 people and running one test on the whole batch. If it comes up negative then you move on. If it comes up positive then you test everyone in the group. This would have to be a fairly sensitive test since a single virus-positive sample combined with 19 virus-negative samples would be very dilutive.If his poll figures continue to be dismal then I'm expecting Trump to do an about face sometime in the next month about direct federal involvement in fighting the pandemic. Ignoring the virus plays with his core base but alienates too many others, so he'll come to understand that his strategy must change. It'll be a tight course he has to plot since he has to keep his base or he'll have no chance at all. Maybe he'll just figure that his core base will stick with him no matter what, and so this summer he'll be sticking it to them.Source: The Health 202: The Trump administration is eyeing a new testing strategy for coronavirus, Anthony Fauci says--Ted

Interesting article on Covid
Don't compare Covid to the Flu

April had around 60,000May had around 40,000.June will hold at under 30,000.Nebraska is crossing a 1 percent case infection rate.18,524 cases of the infections, with 266 deaths. The 1.4 percent death rate holds.Utah crossed 20,000 cases, with just 166 deaths.Testing is clearly the reason for lower disease spread, but can massively ramped up testing bring the fatality rate below 10,000 a month? I hope we can find out.

The death rate will go up around mid-July. Deaths lag cases and cases are exploding to record-setting levels. We almost flattened the curve… then we had to die for Wall Street."There Are more important ihings than living* - Dan Patrick, Leutenant Governor, Texas.ABE:
Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

The death rate will be operating under somewhat different dynamics with the increased testing alone.Nebraska had around 14500 cases of infection with 186 deaths on June 3.Now it is 18775 cases with 267 deaths. Fully 1 percent of the state is or had been Covid positive. The 80 deaths on the last 25 days would extrapolate to about 13,000 nationwide. Nebraska seems to gave more testing , and that makes a difference.

Those numbers do show a drop in the fatality (death) rate per case diagnosed. from .79 to .70. That can certainly be attributed to more testing finding more (and non fatal ) cases.However, there is another number which is scary. The deaths per million of population that are attributed to covid 19. The UK, spain and Italy show in the 500 to 650 range while the US is "only" 387 (by one site). But the US is going up at 1 or 2 per day on that metric.I think, as noted by others, we can expect that to climb more quickly next month. I'll predict it will cross 450 by September and go on from there to pass the "leaders" by years end. That's push the number of deaths past the 200,000 mark.Some months ago the US's deaths per capita was twice Canada's. Then we caught up so you were "only" 1.5 times ours. Now you are on a fast track to be killing twice as many as we have again.Just a note: several have tried to sneak into Canada by saying they were driving through to Alaska which was allowed. The fine dished out was $CDN 1200. (about 900 US). So stay home.

Not alone. The increased testing is insufficient to explain the increased cases. And the death rate will likely be a smaller percentage since the percentage of relatively young people getting the disease is larger than before.But the increase in cases will lead to the number of deaths increasing more than it has in the last month or so.I saw a graph which was very informative but can't find it now. The number of new tests has been increasing roughly linearly over the last three months, whereas the number of new cases rose, then plateaued, then rose precipitously. Therefore the increase in testing does not solely account for the increase in cases.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

And deaths have always been a trailing indicator.The more the el stupidos spread the infection the more the susceptible population will suffer.Party now; kill your parents and grandparents and the infants in a few weeks.Edited by jar, : change fools to el stupidos to satisfy the Fhrer.

Sadly that is true. You always say that the people will get what they want, but I dont think most of them know what they want (except to make this all go away) or what they even need.I wear my mask every day. I stay back from people when possible. And I wash my hands continuously. God gave me a brain for a reason.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.